In Transit
Settlers
My forebears were well acquainted
with these distances
grew close to the prairie
knew the wind tide in its grasses
the cry of wildfowl
deserting the frozen ponds.
On the run from another land’s quarrels
to the periphery of power
they arrived
on this unpromising plain
and began the search for water and a name.
The land lay flat in ambush
made no response
to the advances of the plough
until it grew fertile with their blood.
Their time was their own here
time to grow old and die
time aplenty to die without growing old
to smother in grain dust as a child
or to fall from heat exhaustion
into the machinery.
They held to the earth like a wife.
Today the road spins out beneath the wheels
at ninety fenceposts hiss by
dry streambeds wind through the fields
on either side of the highway embankment
until it is swallowed
in a tangle of city streets.
At home near the outskirts I
recall only their horizons
rolling back under steel how
when the land picked up and blew away
they were rescued by their creditors
and put to work for wages
how they built the road back themselves
to the country they fled
lined up at the ticket office
to enlist in its wars
as now we tune in by satellite
and the distances dissolve.
Song of the Dark
When the lead cold moon
darkens and dwindles
and the feeble sun
slips under the mountains
heading south
dark flocks settle
on the shadow groves
This night of earth sleep
I am pulled by the moon
gathering shadows in secret
swallowing stars
Earth Bed
Less fiercely than river
carves banks
more subtly than glacier
hollows lake
you fit my body
to yours even now
as you turn in sleep
this stone to breathing soil
Phoned Poem for a Married Woman
Why whisper? never mind
what the girls say at coffee
let the boss wait but
talk to me now tell me
what’s wrong with this poem
with all my love poems
where ice turns rock into soil but
you
remain hidden in the core
a shadow
cast by arrogant metaphor
never the real
person I love.
It looks like there’s no way
out for my poem
it simply won’t say what I mean
you won’t enter it
any more than you fade into me
when you get married
and start signing my name.
You talk a while longer
at your far end of the line
then hand up (to hear your voice
was all I wanted)
and return to your files
but gradually
as the afternoon wears thin
and I sit finishing these lines
you remember a little
and a little more of the person
behind my words
and when you start talking about me
everybody gets bored
_a married woman_ they say
oh yes!
and by the time you get home
you will probably call this
a love poem.
The Jealousy of Soil
Blindly
knowing flowers bloom
for any passing eye
while roots only
crush tear
take
soil longs
for the fruit
of all this giving.
The dead only
return
black and brittle on the stem
leaves sodden
trodden to mulch
rent
of all
but the longing
of soil.
And deeper dry
and unwashed
what of the jealousy of stone?
My Mother Celebrates Her 25th Anniversary by Getting a Divorce
She’s not crying now
warming plates for our dinner
and mashing potatoes with milk
for her fiance Gerry, my young bride and me
Once more she has everything in hand
though not long ago she did
let go her tears
at some thoughtless word of mine
and I left her in the kitchen
with a hurt I couldn’t understand
I left her in the kitchen for a decade
of lonely family evenings,
desolate Saturday mornings
with no work to get away to
the pent up silences
of this house of blame
falling in on her a night.
She has put all that behind her now
Dessert is sweetened with laughter
and we do the dishes together
enjoying each other’s company
though Gerry and I are too loud
solving all the world’s problems.
No more crying she tells herself
and half believes it
thinking Gerry is really on the wagon this time
and I go back to my old ways
taking her for granted
smiling with her
not caring to look so close
I see into her eyes
thinking as usual of myself
but twenty-five years from now.
Journey to the East
The morning sun
clarifies everything
and I stand with my thumb out
reading the _Gita_
between cars
transCanada east
My mind is untroubled by sorrows
for pleasures I have
no longings
Sun growing hotter
more kids come and
stand thumb out at the side of the road
so i back up
still reading
_All beings follow nature_
By noon I have backed up
five miles
and the highway has turned
fluid steel
semi orange winnibago blue
_Of what use is restraint?_
At last I cross the road
stand with my thumb out
facing east
In a minute
Uncle Wally pulls over
in his farm truck
laughing
to see it’s me he has stopped for
and his son Lyle
laughs out loud
now his dad has
someone else to talk to
_Even a wise man
follows nature_
Break a Leg
Like a broken leg
roughly set
bound to a branch
then walked on
as far as water
rested
then walked on again
over the Superior north shore
this car
dying on every
two mile hill
backfires shocking
bikers off the road.
Ready heave.
Hand on the wheel
getting up speed
jump in
swing the door shut
throw it in gear
we’re off again.
Finally it’s finished
wants to just sit
pistons steaming
points black
on the shoulder of the road
near a town that boasts it’s
the coldest place on earth.
Nothing to do but thumb
to the Sault for parts.
It must have been simpler once
when your horse broke a leg
you shot it.
Ontario 17
On the bus sleep is the bridge
between separate realities
dual images
run each other through
bus windows
we rest
only while moving
at stops
everyone wakes
_Stay in your seat till
a city appears_
always the same city
Towns collect against the tracks
like papers in a windtrap
rusted out car bottoms
among ditch flowers
At every Greyhound cafe
a radio’s going berserk
hallucinating ears in clouds
of cream through tea
Before reboarding
people string themselves out
along the gravel beach
to watch fish roll in
from the dark horizon
washed up on shore:
a case of broken bottles
Pickled Watermelon
Pocket knife’s best
but even a fingernail will do
Keep the hole small, scrape out the pulp
till the cork fits snug
then carefully, repeat
carefully pour
lick any spills off the fat green flank —
go ahead, spill a bit,
that’s the best part.
Once I poured three bottles of rum
into one of these babies
mind you it was really juiced
we were licking booze off each others’ arms —
come to think of it that’s the best part
but one bottle is plenty
to sweeten your weekend
just cool her overnight
while she sucks up the juice
and the lake will be brighter than ever tomorrow —
the sun will be red
juicy red.
Time was
we had no fridge at the lake
left the melon instead
over night in the spring fed stream —
and really that’s best
but one summer
we left one in the shallows
fat and pickled
next morning she was gone
no sign
All Saturday we steamed
_Did you take her? Then who?_
till we found
on the path to the privy
a raccoon
black eyes glassy
crazy grin on its face
and stiff.
Wisdom Teeth
they may be called, but I
have never grown up
still sleep in the foetal position
would eat less meat
if I did the slaughtering
(rather not think of it)
On the go, as we all are
I have no time
nor jaw for wisdom
My dentist
to spare me the trouble
takes pliers to this remember
I am brother to bear and wolf
For leverage he climbs my chair
tugging and sweating
while my throat
fills up with soggy cotton
but the jaw is stubborn
_Please_ I say _forget it
it’s only a tooth_
but the jaw remembers
it remembers.
Uncle Ezra’s Funeral
Uncle Ezra
alone on the farm
outlived all
his city children
finally took sick
from going to funerals
he was put to bed
for the good of his illness
they found him dead
on his way out the door
Now here we all are
the youngsters
who hardly knew him
and don’t know each other
meeting one time to say goodbye
(but I remember Uncle Ezra
taught me to chop wood
a thing in all my city years
I will never forget)
Now without his ruddy cheeks
in his first new suit
since his wedding day
a bubble of flowers
cartooned over his head
Uncle Ezra
has already slammed the door
on us
and we when the service is over
hurry away to our cars.
My Father Writes a Poem Home from Europe on His Parents’ 25th Wedding Anniversary
_war_
_knees_
_far_
_cease_
The rhymes don’t matter now
but I wonder where and
who he was
the day he took out
the _On Active Service_ paper
(in York awaiting orders?
or a smouldering Dutch village?
on one of those long drugged days
in a French hospital?)
to write what he would never say
_Fight for home and you_
Is that what he meant by the wounded look
that is all I saw my father give
his father while he lived?
Weddings _claim_ children
as a sniper claims victims
and when I read
_A Heritage which soldiers bought
For every girl and boy_
I break out in a sweat
see spots and get the shits
In short it’s a soldier’s life
being the son of a soldier
I am so glad
this was my father’s only poem
glad he didn’t teach me
to marry or give birth to war
If it left him nothing to teach
all right
I’ve learned more from his silence
than I could from all
the poems he never wrote.
Voyager
Drops tossed from an oar
move mountains
on the surface of the lake
You too dip lightly
through street faces
half seen glances
adrift in your wake
You paddle a succession of beds
in bare rooms
observing the silence
of mountains.
Winter in London
Tea is steeping in the pot
As in the early days
of radio, chairs huddle round
the electric fire
magazines
make a rainbow on the floor
Leaves skitter down the road
clouds across the sky
Tea is steeping in the pot
When you get up to
put another coin in the meter
the furniture crowds
closer to the fire.
E P is Dead
_a man on whom the sun has gone down
E P is dead in Venice
at the fall of the year
sun gold on the bay at dusk
is cold in his eyes
(in a snapshot he leans from a window)
This November
when the palaces are boarded up
San Marco’s square almost deserted
when silence fills the courtyards and arcades
from steeple tops the swallows are dispersing
while before his eyes the broad sea darkens
to a vision of a windowless, closed room
_the last American dying the tragedy of Europe_
The last film years old now
still shows him drinking wine
on a Paris sidewalk black wine
that drips down his gnarled scruff of beard
his sunken cheek withdraws
from the camera’s touch
the voice scratches like an old record:
_I thought I knew something
I was wrong_
He sleeps now
sleep bitterly awaited
as the gold sky after sunset
is sleeping light
Envoi:
Stay the affairs of commerce one day
sing once again the soul’s wonder
though it lies in ruins
that old golden dream
and the weak song does in his throat
_Truth is not untrued by reason of our failing
to fix it on paper_
Tourist Police
Welcome to Hellas
Ancient & modern ruins
1st & 3rd Sundays free
So efficient are we
we have a special police force
to take care of tourists
Better than abracadabra
say tourist
say it in your best Alabama
or New England accent
Say it in your own accent tourist
and the border police
quite ransacking your van
and turn you over to the tourist police
who take care of you
Do you need an A
B C or D class hotel?
The tourist police speak English
with English accents
most obliging not at all
my cousin owns a D hotel
In Hermou Street
on the closest to the station
of the market streets
just under the Acropolis
where the sun is hard on the marble
ruins of earlier market streets
hard as bleach on the sea
The hotel’s rates are fixed
by the tourist police
cafe menus and prices are printed
by the market police
you are the first tourists anywhere
protected from gougers and swindlers
we are the first country in history
so honest
we don’t even need elections
except to register
who gets passports and licences
The tourist police takes care of you all
in the narrow Saturday night streets
when the Yankee sailors come ashore
wandering in a daze counting the days
(the rates in the bordellos
are fixed by the market police)
The regime’s official poster
— phoenix with figure of armed soldier —
is pasted like blood on public walls
Why don’t we open a t-shirt shop
and sell caricatures
with the soldier holding a cattle prod
to the genitals of the phoenix
who has the face of mother Athena?
The tourist police will really take care of you
if you go around talking like that
Hellas bon voyage
come again soon
Thursday and Friday open till nine
Don’t wake up the immigrant workers
till Munich Dortmund Hamburg or Keln
Don’t mention what you saw at the people’s hospital
when you had to be taken to a private room
Talk up the vale of Megara
Parnassus Corfu and Olympia
Exit soldiers at Thessaloniki
good night good night Hellas good night
Migration
Astern harbour gulls wing in / out
cross the sun like clouds
dip heads into the westerlies
wing high with daybreak tide
high in the rigging then call
back to sea foam that teases the prow
wing high over red tile roofs
in the village cove ~ white
shining through shadow ~ astern.
So from Iceland St. Malo
from Aleutian coves
dreamers pass
populating sea and sky
a masthead finds its way
through these stars to shore.
Now as then
gulls dive and soar
astern cross the sun
while the village dwindles
then dips in the waves
the sun noses
deep in the cold sea’s
darkening reaches where
it cools before the dawn.
Who Guards the Guard
I walk the embankment evenings
when the sky is sun-swollen
the forest hushed, take air
among flowering weeds and sand
overlooking inland
the gallows and the execution pits.
It’s my only out now
time to myself
between the cliff face and the sea.
Guards wave from their posts
as I pass, prisoners
wait in doorways
smoking, shuffling cards
their eyes darker than night.
But here the sky is calm as memory
the sun scrubs white
the shimmering cliffs.
Across the gulf I see him.
He walks the other shore alone
dwelling as I do on the space between.
We share the intimate
start of discovery
yet neither shouts or waves.
Each walks on
as if still alone.
Though he is free he awaits me here
when I make my evening getaway.
The sight of him frightens me
I wish he would save me.
As I watch he seems to be moving
closer, his eyes on me
as if they could kill.
When I run back to my post he too
turns into his dark country
but through night watch
I know he is there
a sleepless appetite
prowling in the dark.
At York
The gravestones can no longer
be read, even now
rain is levelling the names and dates
arches that housed a splendour
of colour and light
fill a rock garden now:
red lichen green moss white flower
Rain hides the city
but for two landmarks
for warring centuries:
the minster and the smokestack
We walk the wall eating Spanish oranges
looking out from sentry posts
at broken brick and stone
lately painted by the local gangs
while under us imperceptibly
the rain is sliding this wall
and two walls beneath it
deeper
Today
behind the kingsofengland choirscreen
the pageant of Gichi Manitou
revived!
Arches of light are dancing
the thunderbird is flying
over Rome’s eternally
buried walls
in the eternal flame
of eternal northsea gas
in upraised voices
flying
Conquest of Mexico
I
Gold the face
spun gold the headdress
of the grinning lord of death
pendant
round the neck of
the emperor priest
gold inlaid in jade
the god he prays to
II
Like Bacchus out of Asia
the Spaniard rides the sun
in his golden plumage
to the city of mirages
III
Cortes in ancient Darien
refound Homeric Illium
schooners cruised a sea of gold
on a coastline of the sun
IV
Orozco shows him
a mechanical man
whose steel sword rapes
the flaming body
of the goddess America
V
Thus they perished
they were swallowed by the waters
they became fish
they perished
all the mountains perished
A Clearing in the Forest
1. Midatlantic Prayer
Hardships so many
we have endured for the Lord
the discomfort of the hold we count no hardship
the unruly waves no peril
that carry our bark
far from the shores of persecution
to new life beyond this deadly sea.
To the end of life and beyond we follow Him
though the wind is unceasing
and our fetor torments
the creaking, weeping night.
Though the sea storm devour us
our faith will sustain us
to the peace that passeth
80 acres of wood and meadow
in the land of Tuscarora.
2. Dekaniwidah’s Dream
Together we dig up the great tree
throw into the pit all weapons of war
and bury them beneath its trunk
which grows
from the five roots of the people
to reach heaven.
3. The Book of Martyrs
Listen to the partridge cry, that’s the savage
watching waiting.
The savage stalks like a fox
fights like a lion then
disappears into the woods like a bird
he will eat your liver before your eyes.
Nights
locked up in our dark houses
we turn
the pages of the Book of Martyrs:
_the crushing with stones_
_the burning at the stake_
_the rack_
The Vision of Doors
Doors see
no arrivals or departures
only comings and goings
doors are shortsighted
always part of a room
You enter
shutting at your back
snowy mountains plunging rivers
anything
it doesn’t matter
because you don’t look back
Before you
a vision of doors opens
to more rooms more doors
you could go on forever
door to door
hunting
a vision of windows
left behind
CNR Silence
Awhile before dawn the train slows and halts
at a clearing in the north shore forest.
Evergreen branches sag, heavy with snow.
At the side of the embankment is a railway shack.
Inside, a kerosene lantern illuminates a mercator world map.
Gold stars trace a path across a broad pink emptiness;
Europe is a tangle of lines.
Two parka’d figures stoop through the snow toward the hut.
Their faces cannot be seen, and before they reach shelter
the train jerks into motion, plunging into the forest again.
The train is part of nothing it passes.
Observes its own time.
Touches only its dream of steel.
A woman in red and white baseball jacket
half sleeps in front of the window where
the moon skips mutely through the branches.
Her baby sleeps across the facing seat.
She lifts her hand to her mouth ~ a red glow ~
then returns her hand to the window.
Smoke rises, curling slowly.
Morning gradually pales the sky.
In this Desert
oases are island jungles
where we huddle round fires
waiting for shadows
to leap out of the trees
In this desert
oases are avoided
We founder through sand storms
driven by wind tide
swimming with fossils
through drifting dunes
When we meet
in the shadow of a rock
we huddle together in talk
create with our voices
a world regular
as hands and faces
solid as resisting flesh
In the Cypress Hills
Hungry man drinks at stream
of light from lowering sun
rustle of wings in underbrush
as sage wind through grass
cloud shadows brush pine hill
pheasant’s harsh alarm
Heaving to nameless distance
the prairie
tines and glows within
cutbank snakes through hills
to plain/sun/sea
gilding twilight
Scanning inarticulate space
for echo of buffalo thunder
hungry man grieves
translucent
evening is shattered
by silence
Northern Sun
is one more idler
hanging out for bootleg beer
pockets bulging
with apples and oranges
he looks over your shoulder
at the poker table
turns up unwanted
at the John Wayne movie
spoils your aim at horseshoes
with his rosy grin
keeps you up all hours
burning the night away
Patching
Week on week I patch
and go on patching fabric
that no longer holds a thread
patch night on day then
pick loose ends and
go on patching
When you arrive you
might see me
all in one piece
but soon
I begin picking
pulling
before your eyes
I fray
Only later in bed or
on the floor
I see
the cloth I needle
is my flesh
At Bankhead
(a coalmining ghost town near Banff)
I
This granite staircase
without its proud manor
stands alone between snow peaks
last witness to these
black wounds
inflicted on the mountain
II
Follow this cold stream
down till the current
slackens and
sinks
beneath stone
found again
in a coalpit
exposed to the sun
filling with mud and flowers
III
For fear this black earth
rots on contact
we make love standing
then scramble back to the road
stopping only at the cenotaph
to read the names of the dead
Grandfather
He was always my idea
of God himself lines
like a calfskin Bible
righteously presiding
over family Christmas dinners
His pious shadow
fell across the lives
of all his children
as they chose their own careers
married catholics smoked
or in any way transgressed
his law.
I was there once
when he caught my parents
drinking at a party
and when longhaired and 16
I hitchhiked east alone
I learned what people meant
who called him
North Toronto Wasp.
The day he died
my father found me
working Sunday in a ditch
in northern Alberta
Hardly a sign of grief
passed between us
only the look of stern reserve
we both inherited from him
that despite us
outlives him.
Opening My Grandmother’s Bible
She read it Sunday afternoons
in the light of her dining room window
through a magnifying glass that once
in the hands of one of her sons
burned a spot on the cover,
but each night of the week
she rested her eyes on her knitting
while my grandfather read from the family Bible
a full hour before the radio went on,
and for long now, most of my life,
she has felt her way through
this little apartment he moved her to
before he died.
Now the library sends her
cassettes of the Gospels in Modern English
_I’ve no use for books, the TV
is all I can see any more._
Though meant for more thunderous voices
_APPOINTED TO BE READ IN CHURCHES_
the book’s years with her were silent ones,
four pages ruled for family history
are mute.
Only pencilled
numbers on a flyleaf trace
its progress from guineas to dollars
to this rest in her window garden
three flights up in Willowdale.
One scrawled note bequeaths it to her father —
_For Hiram Connell
when Mother is done with it._
Now _Mother_ is done, and the dying
man who wrote is nameless
in his own book,
the granddaughter
has become the grandmother
and passes the book on the me
unmarked, but preserving between its pages
a few fragments:
a daughter’s first needlepoint
an _exhortation to obedience_
and, keeping place at Genesis XLIX
_Jacob calleth his sons and blesseth them_
two maple leaves
all red pressed out of them
for two sons in Europe
1945.
Grandmother
lying in your dark drugged night
whose Gospel is that you whisper in sleep?
while I at your table hunt these pages
for a passage into my past —
one verse of Isaiah
underlined in pencil:
_in a little wrath I hid my face awhile
but with everlasting kindness will I
have mercy on thee._
Spring Snow
Haiku are snowing
gently over
cars in the parking lot
between the red brick
wings of the hospital
snowflakes large as
scraps of torn paper
haiku written on them
almost legible
on the darkening sky.
We are waiting together
as you’ve been waiting
nine months now
the cat on your lap
slowly pushed down from
your stomach to your knees
by the hidden stranger
learning to swim
inside you.
Tonight our waiting
is almost over
and outside the window
it’s snowing haiku
that muffle the sound
of traffic
of the icebound
river breaking open.
Round Midnight
No family but because
you’re more family than I’m used to
I hunt through two bars
hand out till closing time
in the one with the shuffleboard
missing your wit feeling
maybe I don’t know you
~ been away a month ~
as I turn up on your doorstep
with a sixpack.
You’ve just crashlanded
after all night alone
in the bar with the juke box
playing over and over
third-rate romance
low rent rendezvous
till the manager crabbing “This
my bar”
unplugged you and
sent you home white as ashes.
No family brothers anyway
we share the last round
singing another song
sitting face to face
where you might have been
staring out the night
in both chairs.
What Losers?
_Teach the losers,_
the coach says in the staffroom
_and pretty soon you’re a loser too_
and when the bell rings
he goes to make winners
out of the kids he calls
_ya bunch a yahoos_
while I meet my special ed. class
at the front door
and we walk down the hill together
the two of us
to the Sunset Lodge to talk to his gramps.
_What was it LIKE gramps
when you were kids?
What was SCHOOL like?_
Each question the boy makes himself
clearer and the teacher
has done nothing but listen
to the old man’s stories
of his first threshing crew at 13
and of the day years later
when on a railroad crew
he was overtaken on the bare prairie
by a dirt storm that hailed
darkness over him
and I watch the sunmotes drift past the window
the turning cassette forgotten
like the drone of the furnace
asking myself why
no one else in the staffroom
would touch my job
Later in the classroom
asked to set words on paper
the boy
takes pencil in hand like a pea-shooter
and scrawls
_GaMp Qiut sHooL at 10_
and for a moment I too feel the darkness
sentenced
to pore over the pages of his errors
till his sixteenth birthday
He grins and tells me he is stupid
but I’m not fooled he’s smart enough
to know if he makes trouble
the school will let him quit early
I know he’s not stupid I’ve seen
his eyes darken
when he frightens his friends
with the story of the dirt storm
This is a Recording
I don’t understand why I can’t grow plants
I’d give my life for my plants
why can’t I give them life?
First the geraniums then
the ivy rhododendron and yucca died
of too much water or too little
I never knew which
I’m finally left with one cactus
I couldn’t kill.
Knowing cactus like heat
I set it by the stove
a year later I notice
it’s suffocating
coated with gas and grease
so to clean it
I put it with its pot
in the dishwasher
on the setting for greasy pots
That doesn’t seem to have worked
the cactus looks dead.
This is the third time I have phoned
the Department of Agriculture
but all I get is a recording
on the noon market reports.
Snapshot
Frost crackles under foot and my shadow
reels in the headlights of a passing car.
Circuits snap coldly as photographs
burn in my brain
enamel peeling from the smile
black flakes of chemical paper
curl until only the corners are white
two greyish spots in the black
where eyes were.
Another snap
shot in a field last year:
I am in it
by a cairn of rotted posts
I pushed together posing
while my friend took the picture
that burned with him today.
In the dark field I look for the smouldering
ruins of those posts:
a horse
in the snow-covered field
a white horse
is staring at me.
Experiment
Hypothesis: Education is the only hope
Apparati: 2 poinsettia striplings
1 pot of earth
1 ledger 1 stopwatch 1 gallon water
cultural miscellany
Method: Laid 1st plant across table
and taught it
the miracle of photosynthesis
read it the bill of rights
the joy of growing
then measured its rate of self-improvement
The 2nd poinsettia:
threw the dirt on it
squashed it underfoot
allowed it no exercise
fed it only water
Observations: The latter’s growth (in feet per second)
was negligible
but it still holds out
like an obstinate beggar
a large red palm
Meanwhile the educated plant
turned to the colour of ashes
Conclusion: Hypothesis cannot be verified
There remain two possibilities:
a) there is no hope
the schools had better be buried
along with the flags at city hall
(and whatever has turned the colour of ashes)
make a time capsule of it all
and shovel it under
or b) neglect is the only hope
as it was for the Venus
who wore a once-fashionable dress
painted over the stone
from nipples to calf
till centuries of dirt stopping her eyes
revealed the real grain of stone
the beauty the artist spent his craft
in covering
Edmonton, 1970
Though John was the stoned one
I played the fool
loping alongside a passing train
the shriek of steel at my ear
reaching for a high iron rung
till on a city curb
I tripped
and rolled under
(the bushes)
thinking good thing
I didn’t die just now
John would have really freaked out
Affair of the Heart
She is too young to know
how much she knows,
he is old enough
to know he doesn’t.
Her arms trace a dome
around her heart
he calls the house of god,
she thinks he’s joking.
She pays no attention
to his advice, and he
all things considered
does the same.
Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
A rusty hatchet the shrill harmonica
chops at the air but can’t split it
shavings of memory scatter on the floor
that sandpaper voices scratches across
a decade’s static on the stereo
_the times they are achangin_
a spark
that voice touched off
might have touched off
how many lives what world
but times are still changing
and here lies the lumber
cold and petrified
no fire only dirt in the eyes
and the shoulder of the highway to cry on.
They say in Chile
one man’s songs were so loved
he was taken in by police
they cut off his hands so he couldn’t play
they cut out his tongue so he couldn’t sing
they cut out his heart so no more songs
could disgrace them
but despite them
he still in singing under the breath
of millions on the streetcorners
of his country.
And still the cutting voice
whittles away at time singing
spare change on the sidewalk
outside the labour exchange
spare change but there it is
there is no blood on the album
who told you you’d get what you asked for
who told you you wanted nothing more?
July 11, 1978
for Irina Ginzburg
“USA has political prisoners in its thousands but
USSR has political prisoners in its tens of thousands”
– Andrew Young
Irina Ginzburg has only one
husband
one voice to cry out
for him
not one chance
to defend him.
Locked out of the courtroom now
for using her one
voice
refusing his accusers one
respect
she is discarded like so much
refuse.
She walks unseeing
past the Western reporters
opening her umbrella
in front of her face
unable to hide
her dry spectacled
hopeless eyes
from the camera.
One political prisoner
in one court
one wife one mother
in the slow
endless rain
walking away
into the photograph
that arrives next day
on my doorstep
in Edmonton, Alberta
drenched with rain.
Calgary ’80
The pink ladies and couriair
cars prowl seventh avenue
between open pits and cable spools
THE CASE OF THE DISAPPEARING SIDEWALK!
On this corner
frog-throated boys used to sing
CALGARY HERALD PAPER
LATE CITY EDITION
HERALD PAPER
and give change from their aprons with sharp-eyed
fingers
where today
an acre of glass encases
a twelve-month garden
frequented by popcorn bags and exotic birds
I can’t hear from the street,
and drill bits
all sizes
sexy and primitive:
office ornaments
paper weights
garden fountains
drill bits
drill bits have balls
THIS IS A HARDHAT AREA
NO HELP NEEDED
Across from this sign I stand a half hour
to see how many Ontario dropouts
come looking for employment:
no one
loiters around the jobsite,
everyone hurries by
carrying briefcases, money sacks, takeout food
No one walks by as if they had the day off
No one is retired or too young to work
Even I can’t stand here idle, I take notes
I tell myself, must be a working writer
must take notes wherever I go,
then I’ll find out
where the sidewalks went.
Afternoon of a Political Prisoner
(after Yeats)
Outside
she had no patience for what the day brought
no so much
emptiness she devours
sweet numbing healing peace
Inside patience is easy
when she is not being tortured
when the sun even shines
unbarred and unwired
She sits at her cell window so still
a bold gull flies down
and stabs her cheek
There is little blood
and she barely feels it
so glad to be
left alone
one day
Empty Bottles
line up all the empty bottles
the long-necked beer bottles from the antique stores
the wine bottles and pop bottles left on beaches
steam off the labels and line the bottles up, the green ones with
the brown black yellow and clear ones
line up the beer bottles whose labels have been torn off by
neurotic fingers
and the bottles sent back by the breweries because they have
cockroaches or dead mice at the bottom
line up the bottles afloat on all the seas, those with messages in
them and those without any
and the bottles with methyl hydrate-soaked cotton in them used by
schoolkids for killing insects
line up the bottle that killed Malcolm Lowry with the bottle that
killed Dylan Thomas and the bottles that killed all the drunken
poets nobody’s heard of and the poets who spoke all their lines
into their bottles
and all of Purdy’s crocuses that weren’t smashed on frozen
roadsides when thrown from car windows
line up the bottles of dark glass we look through darkly when we
want to see the ghosts of our former selves
and the bottles Dr. Jekyll drank from, and all the Dr. Jekylls
whether on the stage, in movies or on television
and the bottles of rubbing alcohol and aftershave and nail polish
remover people only drink from in dark alleys
line up the embalming fluid bottles someone was saving to build a
glass house some day
and the bottles of nerve gas saved up for the war nobody wants
and the bottles of toxic gas cruising the streets disguised as
trucks
and the pill bottles, the billions of pill bottles emptied each
year, and billions that sit half-empty for years on medicine
shelves
line up the empty bottles sent back by hospitals for refills
line up all the empty bottles
the party’s over
The Green Comes
Out of cracks in the pavement
the green comes
menacing
all smooth surfaces
rooting
under the cities
suckering out
all over the suburbs
Year by year
the green comes
with flowers
coming and coming
all over themselves
dying
fragrantly
into the sulphurous air
green then
ripe then
rotting
then green again
sprouting
out of putty
climbing
the silent steel towers
clinging
to petrochemical soils
greening
with a mould green perhaps
but green
fibrillating
everywhere
eating
our skeletons inside out
turning
each one of us
green
Night Highway
He’s a strange bird
who deserts his nest
twice in one year.
He is happy
to be arriving
happy soon after
to leave.
Wherever he is
it’s not right!
and he’s off
somewhere
anywhere
away
on a ribbon of tail lights
in low orbit
strung out
like radio
at the far end
of the band.
Moving In
Smells accumulate in corners year by year:
of mildew in the cupboards,
ash in the woodstove downstairs,
dust and cobwebs over all the hoarded jars
and hardwood and moulding in the rafters,
the cool smell of water dripping on wood.
Moving into this house no one has moved out of
we hardly possess it, merely add our trunks and boxes
to the accumulation in the basement,
jam them in around the unused moving crate,
between heaps of lumber, on shelves
of bottles jars and tins,
my tools go onto the workbench and get lost
amid curtain rods pipe sections twists of wire
tile grout slug bait lawn seed screws and
nails, tobacco tins of nails.
On the wall where it must have hung since 1954,
a _Saturday Evening Post_ cover:
the bright-eyed husband works at a bench like this
while upstairs in her negligee the young wife
sits in her blue bedroom
gazing out the window at the moon
as _she_ might have watched from her blue bedroom,
the widow who haunted this house
after the builder’s death, the woman
who brought sweet smells to the pantry
and left handwritten Swedish recipes in the drawers,
who saved his long-necked beer bottles
and his newspapers from the war,
who kept up the garden as he began it:
crocus tulip daffodil rhododendron
iris raspberry rose,
who left
her trowel and gardening glove beneath a raspberry cane.
And locks accumulated in the years she was alone,
one of the last Liberal voters in British Columbia:
a lock and two bolts on the back door,
two locked doors in front,
and more bolts on the basement door,
each room can be closed to all others,
and here in the short hallway
she could sit with closed doors all around her
and cry to the ceiling far away.
The World at 8
Sun shines on the kitchen table
enervates the rising coffee steam,
and lazy man plugs in to the morning
news, because the paper isn’t
news any more.
Some days
stories break hour to hour so
I feel I’m accomplishing something
whenever I tune in,
I’m there
when the spaceship touches down
when the murderer chooses death
with wet lips.
With this knowledge
I hope to make a better soup for lunch
but before sitting down
instead of grace
I need to know whether to despair
of earthly treasures, or if
I may breathe easier awhile,
chewing place names in the strait of Hormuz
with my zucchini.
Red Shift
At a rate proportional to their distance the stars
are moving out, away, apart.
From any point it appears the same, apart, away.
Every self is the centre.
Distant stars are vacating so rapidly their light
has stretched and turned red.
In fact their distance is measured in redness.
This explosion of stars appears only to the spectroscope
as memory, long, long past.
Only by dropping apples and listening to streetcars pass
do we know they have survived their ancient images.
The physics hasn’t changed.
The stars are there but, like memory, millions of light years
farther than they seem.
The red shift is visible on this planet,
though only to the human eye.
Faster, fastest, everyone moves apart.
Having left you at the airport and driven as far as the bridge,
I look back and see only the starless city sky, bathed in red.
Five to Midnight
(for my son)
At last the storm is passing, or pausing
to restore itself over the gulf, clouds heave
a redolent breath on the rooftops,
and behind the closed door your howls
have ended,
sleep
washes anger and fear from your face.
I stand over your bed twenty years
from an understanding with you,
knowing we may not have those years,
or if we do, today
will be dream time then to both of us,
become other people, translated
into foreign lives.
You won’t remember this day, and I
might say nothing happened:
we made it through the hours at home
on the bus and on
the hate/love rollercoaster ride of being five,
I listened to the news at lunch, dreading
to be out of touch another hour,
we put together your jigsaw puzzles
to show you had all the pieces,
you did a lot for yourself, did without
even me in the end,
as you will have to
some day we can’t imagine.
The sky is impatient, tugged and tossed
in a mist of last roses,
and above the rain
satellites plough silent cameras through
what is left of the twentieth century,
almost everywhere on earth it is tomorrow.
-Vancouver, November 1980